Refat Aljumily

Welcome to my blog post. I am Refat Aljumily, a junior forensic linguist and computational stylometrist, and, from a professional point of view, freelance researcher and lecturer. I have finally decided that I need a personal blog, so I have accepted with pleasure the kind invitation of the Global Journals Incorporated to start with something new, bold, and practically-made to increase my engagement with the academic community and get closer to my valued colleagues and readers to learn and share ideas with them.

I obtained my BA degree in English Language and Education at the university of Baghdad-college of Education (Iraq) in 1999 and my MA degree in English Linguistics at the university of Baghdad-college of Languages (Iraq) in 2006 under the supervision of Prof. Abedulwhid M. Muslit. During the bachelor and master university studies from 1999 to 2006, I was also working for the Iraqi Ministry of Interior (IMO) 1994-2007. I held policing posts, where I had responsibility for a number of different policing operations in the areas of tactical crime analysis, administrative crime analysis, and police personnel training and development.

Following 13 years in policing, I returned to academia. In September 2009, I joined the PhD program (PT) at the university of Newcastle (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK) under the supervisor of Dr. Hermann Moisl and Prof. Mike Rossington. My Ph.D. study was Computational Stylometry. I used this approach to examine the question of the authorship of the anonymous 1821 translation of Goethe’s Faustus with reference to nine candidate authors using a very large corpus of their respective writings based on the usage of function words applying five cluster analytical methods: Four hierarchical linear methods (Single, Average, Complete, Ward), two linear non-hierarchical methods (PCA and MDS), and two non-linear methods (SOM and Isomap).

In the course of my PhD study, I first fell in love with the techniques of Stylometry when I started to read “Faustus from the German of Goethetranslated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge edited by Frederick Burwick and James McKusick, 2007 (Oxford University Press), and when I started to read a great deal about the evolution of Stylometryin humanities scholarship and digital humanities. In particular, I was inspired by theideas of Dr. David Holmes, a modern day Sherlock, (College of New Jersey-School of Science). Throughout my reading, I found thatStylometry has legal as well as academic and literary applications ranging from the questions of the authorship of disputed works to forensic linguistics.

When completing my PhD in (September 2015), for which my thesis addressed certain aspects of forensic linguistics and authorship attribution, I have continued the same line of study and research by putting my knowledge of (e.g. corpus linguistics, forensic linguistics, quantitative criminology, and multivariate analytical methods)into practiceto create a strong research profile and to see the results of my hard work going to print and being read by academic scholars and students.In these works I conducted different research projects, applied different research methodologies, used different analytical methods, the aim of which, for example, was to generate a hypothesis about an author, text, genre, or to evaluate different sources of crime data. However, a list of publications with the links is available here.

As my research interest has been, and continues to be on corpus linguistics, at present, I am conducting a research to examine the Bible and Qura’n using different mathematical and corpus pre-processing methods. The project is expected to be in three parts. The first part attempts to analyze and classify the Bible by its lexical content, with the main objective of generating a mathematical model about the thematic structure of the Bible that links its books to one another in the corpus. The second part attempts to analyze and classify the Bible and the Qura’n by their linguistic similarities, with the main objective of generating a mathematical model that can identify thematic/stylistic similarities and differences between the Bible and the Quran. The third part tests the generating models to determine whether they are valid or not.The expected results will be usable in understanding, on the one hand, the thematic structure of the Bible, and the linguistic (stylistic/thematic) similarities and differences between the Bible and the Qura’n on the other. The project will be based on effective experimental multivariate methods that will generate data and analyse it in an objective and replicable way.

I currently act as a reviewer for the journal of Studies in Media and Communications and in March 2016 joined the Editorial board.

Let’s not forget to thank the whole team of Global Journals Incorporated for professional, efficient, and rapid publication service from beginning to end. I have been with Global journals since 2015 and my publishing experience, as an author, is unforgettable and pleasant: I did not face ant problem to work with Global journals starting from the submission of manuscript till the time it got edited and published. The hardworking team members always give a prompt reply and suggestions in a polite way. Global journals positive attitude, high quality communication, and ability to motivate and inspire authors and academics will result in leading heights of reaching goals.